Stephen Kovacevich is one of the most searching interpreters.  As a pianist he has won unsurpassed admiration for his playing of Beethoven, Brahms, Mozart and Schubert.  In addition to his long and distinguished career as a soloist he has conducted for many years, winning warm praise for his work with orchestras throughout the world in repertoire from the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.

On 17 October 2010 Stephen Kovacevich celebrated his seventieth birthday with a concert at the Wigmore Hall, a venue he performed in for the first time over fifty years ago. Artists taking part in the concert included Martha Argerich and the Belcea Quartet.

Born in Los Angeles, Stephen Kovacevich made his concert debut as a pianist at the age of eleven.  When he was eighteen he moved to England to study with Dame Myra Hess.  His international reputation has been built both on his concert appearances, renowned for their thoughtfulness and re-creative intensity, and on the highly acclaimed recordings he has made throughout his career.

Kovacevich has enjoyed two long-term relationships with recording companies, first Philips and then EMI.  Great projects of his work with EMI were a compelling series of Schubert Sonatas and a set of the 32 Beethoven Sonatas completed in 2003, hailed as one of the most authoritative ever recorded.  One critic described The Hammerklavier as: an unflinching, sometimes combative view of a titanic masterpiece, and a version to be spoken of in the same breath as those of Brendel, Gilels and Pollini...Kovacevich announces the music’s potency from the first bar.

Kovacevich has recently released to unanimous critical praise Beethoven’s Diabelli Variations for Onyx Classics, exactly forty years after his first recording of the work for Philips in 1968. The Financial Times wrote,…a temperamental, almost explosive approach that resonates with rhythmic and nervous energy but also leaves room for elegance, wit and introspection. Kovacevich’s journey is always engrossing and never less than Beethovenian. This recording won the 2009 Classic FM Gramophone Editor’s Choice Award.

Stephen Kovacevich has appeared with many of the world’s finest orchestras and conductors including Colin Davis, Hans Graf, Bernard Haitink, Kurt Masur, Simon Rattle and Georg Solti.

Stephen Kovacevich is a committed chamber music player whose partners include Steven Isserlis, Gautier Capuçon, Renaud Capuçon, Kyung-wha Chung, Truls Mørk, Emmanuel Pahud and Anna Larsson.  Future concerts include partnerships with Alina Ibragimova (Brahms and Takemitsu – Wigmore Hall), Philippe Graffin (Brahms’s Trio – Wigmore Hall), Khatia Buniatishvili (Wigmore Hall) and the Belcea Quartet (Brahms’s Piano Quintet at the Bath MozartFest).

May 2013